Pablo Picasso - La Vie

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) - La Vie (1903)
Equatorial Guinea Stamp Issued 1973
Painting at the Cleveland Museum of Art USA

Pablo Picasso went through a period where most of his work consisted of monochrome greens or blues.  This is one of his most famous works during that period - there is an overwhelming sense of desolation in this work.  This period of blue desolation was common in Picasso's work following suicide by one of his friends, Carlos Casagemas, in Paris in 1901.

Picasso was only 20 when he completed this painting.  His paintings would depart radically from European convention from 1907 starting with the Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.  This would lead him into being one of the most famous figures of the modern art world.

Mother and Sick Child is another one of his desolate depressing works through this period, which was fittingly used as a stamp by the Maldives when Picasso died in 1973.

Other Picasso works on Stamps:
Seated Nude

Pablo Picasso - Seated Nude

Seated Nude by Pablo Picasso 

Republic of Equatorial Guinea 

Stamp issued 1978,Painting completed 1905

This is one of Picasso's works before he become of the the most famous artists of the modern era.  He was living in Paris at the time of completing this work, and he would change his style two years after completing this work, be re-arranging the faces of his models and going towards two dimensional painting, in a radical departure from European conventions at the time.

His other works that have been used on stamps include:

Mother and Sick Child

La Vie